Strange to say, Nabokov was putting the finishing touches onan ambitious science fiction novel even as he made this grandpronouncement. Ada, or Ardor was published eight months later,two weeks after Nabokov’s 70th birthday, togreat acclaim. Alfred Appel, writing in the NewYork Times, declared that, with this work—thelongest novel of Nabokov's career— the Russianémigré had established himself as the "peer ofKafka, Proust and Joyce."

Appel might have justifiably made comparisonswith Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle,or Philip José Farmer's The Gate of Time, orRobert Silverberg's The Masks of Time—1960sworks that anticipated the alternate history conceptNabokov develops at length in Ada. Mostcommentators preferred to downplay the sci-fithemes that underpin this novel, awkwardlysearching for ways of defusing the intrusion ofpulp fiction ideas into a literary masterwork."This description makes Ada sound like science fiction," Appel admits,"and in part it is." But then he prefers to find another term, declaringthat Nabokov is the author of "physics fiction"—a label that seems abit more distinguished. Other critics insisted that Ada was a novelabout language, or a love story, or a puzzle masquerading as a story,or a commentary on fiction.

"We should always remember that the work of artis invariably the creation of a new world, so that thefirst thing we should do is to study that new worldas closely as possible, approaching it as somethingbrand new, having no obvious connections with theworlds we already know."Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

Yet, from the very start, readers can tell that Nabokov is playing bydifferent rules than Proust or Joyce. The book begins in the early19th century, but characters repeatedly refer to anachronistictechnologies—including airplanes and motion pictures. Yet theyhave no electricity, and apparently enforce a strict taboo againsteven mentioning it—the result of some ambiguous historicalcatastrophe referred to as "the L disaster." Since that time, electricityhas become "too obscene spiritually" to speak about. Many of thetechnologies in Ada are run on water—people speak on the hydro-powered "dorophone" instead of using a telephone, and get lightfrom a murmuring "dorocene" lamp (the prefix 'dor' ostensibly acorruption of 'hydro').

The novel takes place on a planet that is geographically similar toEarth, but called Demonia or Antiterra by the characters. Much ofwhat we know as North America, especially parts of Canada, revealsa marked Russian cultural flavor—similar to the French influence oncurrent-day Québécois culture. The United States proper, on Antiterra,extends down into South America. England is a monarchy ruled byKing Victor, and many parts of the world—including France, India,South Africa and Scandinavia—are under British control.

The people on this planet have some awareness of our own Earth,which they call Terra, but it figures as part of their religious beliefs. Instead of God, they refer to Log, and some believe that they go toTerra, a kind of paradise, when they die. A few fanatics or occultistshave visions or dreams of Terra while still alive, buttheir descriptions are ridiculed the way we mightdismiss a purveyor of UFO conspiracy theories.Those who talk too much about Terra can evenfind themselves branded as lunatics.

Yes, this can only be described as science fiction.Nabokov layers against it a transgressive love story,evolving over eight decades, between Van Veenand his sister Ada. This affair between underagedsiblings, presented in intimate detail, is far moreunconventional than even Humbert Humbert'srelationship with Lolita—and it is testimony to howmuch censorship enforcement had changed between1955 (when Lolita was released) and 1969 (whenAda came out) that the later novel didn't result in arrests,book burnings and and public outcry. Yet the prominence of a love storyin the plot does little to change the anomalies of the alternate universe inwhich it is set, peculiarities that are brought to the reader's attention on virtually every page.

So how can we reconcile the reality of this unrealistic novel withNabokov's stated scorn for sci-fi?

Long before he began work on Ada, Nabokov expressed similarreservations about genre tales. In his 1952 short story "Lance,"the narrator announces: "I utterly spurn and reject so-called 'sciencefiction.' I have looked into it and found it as boring as the mystery-storymagazines—the same sort of dismally pedestrian writing with oodlesof dialogue and loads of commutational humor. The clichés are, ofcourse, disguised; essentially, they are the same throughout all cheapreading matter, whether it spans the universe of the living room."

Can we take Nabokov at face value? The very story that denouncessci-fi, "Lance," deals with space travel. His story "The Visit to theMuseum" involves teleportation. His 1944 tale "Time and Ebb" isnarrated by a scientist who reflects with nostalgia on the wondersof the past (but the reader's present). "The Vane Sisters" focuseson parapsychology, and the narrator of The Eye manages to continuehis story after killing himself. These stories clearly borrow from sci-fiand fantasy, but the connection in other stories is just as noteworthy, ifless obvious. For example, Nabokov often imagined strange mythicallocales for his fiction, such as the kingdom of Zembla in Pale Fireor the city Padukgrad in Bend Sinister—these fanciful geographiesare only a step away from the alternate universes of sci-fi authors,and in retrospect can be seen as paving the way for the Antiterra ofAda.

Needless to say, such examples reflect Nabokov's willingness todepart from the conventions of strict realism, and embrace far-fetched concepts, whether technological or metaphysical, whenthey fit his needs. Indeed, on the opening page of his posthumousLectures on Literature, we encounter a statement that could easilyrepresent the dominant ethos of the sci-fi writer: "We should alwaysremember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world,so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closelyas possible, approaching it as something brand new, having noobvious connections with the worlds we already know." That advicemight apply to the reader of Nabokov's Ada or Pale Fire, but just asaptly to the audience for Dune or The Left Hand of Darkness.

And did Nabokov really despise science-driven storytelling by otherauthors? He expressed admiration for H.G. Wells. He assigned RobertLouis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to hisstudents at Cornell. And Nabokov once noted that, during his youth,Jules Verne ranked among his favorite authors, although these bookslater, he was quick to add, "lost the glamour and thrill they held for me."

Yet Nabokov’s most revealing comment on sci-fi comes in the contextof an remark to an interviewer about Shakespeare. "After all," he admits,"if we start sticking group labels, we’ll have to put The Tempest in theSF category, and of course thousands of other valuable works." Herewe get to the crux of Nabokov's sci-fi problem: it's not the books thatupset him, but the label, which brings with it expectations of theaforementioned "goons and gals."

By temperament and background, Nabokov was perfectly equippedto write sci-fi—indeed one might even see him as destined to do so. As a storyteller, he had only a half-hearted commitment to realism,and delighted in the improbable and fantastic as literary spices thatcould enhance a narrative's flavor. He was a scientist himself, andthe curator of lepidoptera at Harvard’s Museum of ComparativeZoology. A scientific paper, published in 2011, drew on gene-sequencing technology to vindicate Nabokov's theory of butterflyevolution. "It's a fitting tribute to the great man," commentedevolutionary biologist James Mallet, "to see that the most modernmethods that technology can deliver now largely support hissystematic arrangement."

This interest in science permeates Ada. Our protagonist VanVeen is a professor and renegade scholar, whose expertiseencompasses literary techniques, philosophical musings, thedebunking of psychology, and a bold reframing of the concepts ofspace and time. Veen frequently takes the reader on awkwarddetours from the story of his love life in order to present his defianttheories of physical reality. In truth, these are the most sluggishparts of Ada, and Nabokov seems to forget for long stretches thathe is writing a novel, not competing with Bergson, Whitehead andEinstein. He clearly has the precedents of Proust and Mann in mind,two other novelists who incorporated reflections on time into theirnovels—and both referred to in the pages of Ada. But their poeticreflections on la durée intérieure are more art than philosophy, whileNabokov abandons his own greatest virtue, namely his quirky andfanciful mode of expression, during these turgid sections of Ada, andadopts the severe tone of a tenured pedant. Even so, his willingnessto disrupt his own carefully developed narrative with these densetheoretical passages reveals just how much he valued theconceptual elements underpinning his novel.

When he is not trying to improve on Einstein, Nabokov dazzles withall his trademarked bag of tricks: wit and wordplay, sex and cynicism,a precision bordering on parody, and a vocabulary and allusions thatwill send even lifelong lexicographers to their library. If you aren't willingto play this game by Nabokov's rules, you ought to seek out anotherbook right now. Many things in Ada are deliberately obscure at firstglance, but pleasingly explicated later in the book, while other remain submerged in mystery, or hover in the background half-explained.Okay, Nabokov offers his own footnotes, credited to a 'VivianDarkbloom'—but that anagram should signal immediately thatthese points of clarification are simply another level of the samemultilevel game of bluff and bluster. Yet if, like me, you are drawn totexts that offer secret riches to the persistent and perspicacious, Adaought to be on your reading list.

And nowadays, when the concepts of sci-fi increasingly show up inhighbrow fiction, we have another reason to admire Ada, or Ardor. Here is the proud forerunner of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas andMichael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, HarukiMurakami's 1Q84 and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. I'dlike to believe that, if Nabokov had lived long enough to see thispowerful merging of genre concepts and progressive literarytechniques, he would have reconsidered his curt dismissals ofscience fiction—and maybe even have admitted that he had beenwriting it all along.

Ted Gioia's next book is Love Songs: The Hidden History, forthcomingfrom Oxford University Press.